1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for estimating food commodity intakes. More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and a system for estimating food commodity intakes capable of more accurately estimating food intake data by converting all ingredients of mixed foods into food commodities.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is necessary to obtain the amount of pesticides remaining in foods, and objective and reasonable information associated with food intakes affected by individual difference, in order to evaluate exposure of harmful substances including chemical substances such as pesticides and contaminants such as heavy metals that remain in foods. In domestic, databases and information on residual pesticides, and the type and amount of heavy metals and the like, of respective crops through monitoring of harmful substances for several years are obtained, but information on intake of respective crops and cooked and processed foods using the same is unsatisfactory.
A variety of programs used for obtaining the intake of foods, an acceptable daily intake, food intakes of nutrient components and the like can be calculated based on nutrition survey databases of respective nations. However, a common problem of these programs is that, since although raw materials can be seen through the recipe of one food, but other processed foods may be contained in these raw materials, the intake of food commodities cannot be accurately analyzed.
For example, bibimbap is a mixed food prepared from raw materials such as rice, red pepper paste (gochujang), lettuce and carrot. Among these materials, lettuce and carrot are food commodities, but red pepper paste is a mixed food containing different food commodities. Food commodity means a minimum-unit element constituting a food. It is possible to reasonably and objectively calculation of the amount of substances remaining in foods and evaluation of the risk thereof, when information on consumers and intake of food commodities can be objectively obtained. National nutrition survey food intake databases provide information associated with the aforementioned food commodities such as lettuce, carrot, red pepper paste as well as information associated with the mixed food. For this reason, there is a need to study a method for estimating food commodity intakes from this information.